Top Ten Data Center Trends and Challenges for 2009

Matt Stansberry Senior Site Editor

SearchDataCenter.com
Mstansberry@techtarget.com 541-505-7793

Abstract
Data center operators are facing more change today than any time in the past 10 years. The increased demand for computing capacity, uptime and lower costs is forcing data center pros to push the boundaries of traditional data center designs and technologies. This presentation will offer an overview of the top ten trends shaping the industry in 2009.

What We Learned From Our Survey

Server trends are holding steady -- x86 rack based computers are driving data center purchasing and design. Data center managers are paying more for power and becoming increasingly aware of new green technologies. But nearly 40% of respondents dont know if their power bill changed from 2007-2008 they are not measuring costs or consumption. Virtualization is mainstream and growing, with VM deployments and density on the rise. Backup and DR tools lead the current third party tool usage scenarios.

Systems management spending is still weak, but the majority of companies are investing or have invested in CMDB software, which analysts say is the first step toward building a mature systems management foundation.

About The Audience

12% of respondents identify themselves as IT execs (VP, CTO, CIO), 27% as IT managers.
Nearly 30% work for companies with over $1 billion in revenue and over 10,000 employees. 73% of respondents work in a central data center. 13% manage over 1,000 servers.

Budget Growth Averages 5.12% -- An Increase From 2007 Growth Estimates

30.00% 25.00% 21.23% 20.00% 15.00% 10.88% 10.00% 4.74% 5.00% 0.00% Increase of 510% Increase greater than 10% No change in spending Increase less than 5% Decrease of 5- Decrease of Decrease less 10% more than 10% than 5% 4.56% 4.39% 28.42% 25.79%

1. Container Data Centers

So What Is A Container Data Center?

Portable data centers are built into a standard 20'
shipping container. External cooling and power infrastructure are required. Some systems use closed loop water cooling, some specialized high density air cooling. Different designs have variable compute densities, ranging from 8 to 28 racks, depending on server form factor and cooling strategies.

Why Data Center Trailers? Unsustainable Data Center Growth

Companies are building new data centers to provide additional power for an increasing number of servers. The primary drivers are application growth and disaster recovery.

In our 2007 survey on data center construction, more than 80% of respondents said they planned to build new facilities or expand in the coming 18 months.
According to AFCOM, over 60% of pre-2005 data centers will be incapable of supporting business requirements because of capacity constraints by 2009. This construction boom is not a onetime catch-up. Uptime says server growth will drive additional data center construction every three to five years.

Everybody Is Building Containers

Sun Modular Data Center
Verari FOREST Container HP Performance Optimized Data Center (POD) IBM iDataPlex container APC mobile data center

Dell (coming soon)

Suns Modular Data Center

Modular Data Center External Infrastructure

Rackable ICE Cube

Top Selling Points For Containers

Ten times faster to deploy than a traditional data center.
Reduced capital expenses with incremental

growth.
Flexibility to relocate and reuse data center assets. High density, high efficiency design.

Top Container Drawbacks

Cost premium on one-off designs
Specialized engineering requirements Homogenous IT architecture isnt a fit for most companies Difficult to work inside containers Scale is too large for most companies

2. CMDB Implementations
80% of IT failures are due to changes in the system. IT admins' daily to-do lists are getting longer, and the information they need to complete these tasks is

changing faster.

What Is A CMDB?
A configuration management database (CMDB) is a database that contains all relevant information about the components in a data center, and relationships between those components.
CMDB components are referred to as configuration items (CI). CIs can include software, hardware, documentation, and personnel. The processes of configuration management seeks to specify, control, and track configuration items and any changes made to them in a comprehensive and systematic fashion.

Rapid Adoption Of CMDBs

In SearchDataCenter.coms 2007 purchasing intentions survey, 24% of respondents had invested in a CMDB, and another 24% were evaluating them.

2008: 55% have invested in a CMDB, 5% will purchase, and another 19% plan to evaluate this year.
HP, BMC lead in market share, with CA and IBM trailing.

Adoption Vs. Implementation

Gartners CMDB adoption numbers match ours, but say only 3-5% of global 2000 companies have completed the implementation of a CMDB. One wonders how many people doing CMDB are in fact putting in an asset database, or some other userdefined version of CMDB. Or how many are there where doing means Fred has been told to come up with something in his spare time with no budget. Or where doing means we bought a tool that says CMDB on the brochure but we havent got past implementing network alerting or incident tickets yet. IT Skeptic

CMDB Implementation Pitfalls

Manually populating a CMDB is time consuming
project. Automated data management products can federate systems quickly, but homegrown applications and heterogeneous data centers

make automation difficult.

IT systems change faster than staff can manually update the CMDB. Without automated federation,

latency develops in the system.

3. Put Servers To Sleep

A server running at 20% utilization may draw up to 80% of its maximum power. The vast majority of companies could throttle or power-down idle servers with no impact on application performance.

Power-Down Features Gain Ground In 2008 Survey

90.00% 80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00% 24.50% 3.40% 2.55% 10.00% 10.20% Improving air conditioning efficiency Server virtualization 30.78% 6.22% 22.20% 57.83% 7.96% 11.84% Air-side or water-side economizers 8.15% 10.97% None 24.79% 28.31%

49.58%

Direct current Hydrogen fuel Liquid cooling Power-down (DC) power cells features on servers Have implemented percentage

Will implement percentage

How Do You Power-Down Servers?

Chip Level: AMD and Intel Corp. use features that allow server firmware to throttle down CPU cycles during low-demand periods. Intel calls the technology Demand-Based Switching, which minimizes the applied voltage and clock speed on a microprocessor until more processing power is actually required. AMD calls the technology PowerNow and claims that it can reduce CPU power at idle by 75%. OS Level: Microsoft built processor power management into its operating system in Windows Server 2003, but the majority of users never enabled the feature. In Windows Server 2008 power management is enabled out of the box. The new power management feature provides finer-grain controls that allow the OS to scale back the voltage going to the processor, rather than putting CPUs to sleep when servers are idle, which can result in latency issues.

Power-Down Process Continued

Element manager level: These software tools ship free with servers. Major players are entering this field, but the capabilities are often single-vendor solutions. HPs Insight Power Manager (ProLiant and Itanium) and IBMs PowerExecutive (BladeCenter and System x) are two examples. While specific to hardware vendors, these tools allow for real-time monitoring, power capping and CPU throttling. Third-party tools: New companies are touting vendor neutral products that can manage across virtual and physical servers, providing policy-based throttle down features. The most prominent company in this space is Cassatt. Virtualization vendors such as Virtual Iron, VMware and Citrix are all getting involved in capabilities to shut down physical machines when there are no virtual machines running on the hardware, but these are brand new features.

Active Power Myths Debunked

MYTH 1: Some believe that turning servers on and off compromises hardware reliability. But computers are designed to handle 40,000 on-off cycles before failure, and youre not likely to approach that number during the average computers five- to seven-year life span. In fact, IBM and Hewlett- Packard encourage their employees to turn off idle computers, and some studies indicate it would require on-off cycling every five minutes to harm a hard drive. MYTH 2: It takes more energy to turn off a server for a few hours and then back on rather than to just leave it running. The small surge of power created when devices such as computers are turned on is vastly smaller than the energy used by running a device when it is not needed.

Problems With Power-Down

Performance latency potential.
Servers support fragile, multi-tiered data center interdependencies.

Huge consequences for system failures.

A lack of major case studies. Hardware stability FUD. Case for ROI is still developing.

4. Cloud Computing Goes Mainstream

What Is Cloud Computing?

The basic concept is on-demand access to computing power and storage space via the Internet.
Companies are providing CPUs and storage, but the next step is providers bundling applications and platforms into the mix.

Resistance Is Futile
Google, Yahoo, MSFT host applications I use in the cloud every day (like Gmail).
At a recent industry conference, data center managers from very conservative companies (Ford, Boeing) said theyd have no problem putting non-critical apps into the cloud. Data center hosting companies are talking about building out high density infrastructure to either rent to cloud providers -- or to become cloud providers themselves.

Benefits Of Cloud Computing

Lower capital costs: Cloud costs less than data center expansion.
Increase efficiency by reducing overprovisioning of data center resources.

More business agility: On-demand computing is faster than data center infrastructure build out.
Disaster recovery: Backup can be abstracted from physical layer

Cloud Risks And Pitfalls

The main consumers of cloud computing are SMBs, startups and end users that don't have legacy constraints of large companies.
Cloud companies could go under, get acquired or just disappear in an outage. Users need to have documented recovery processes. Compliance and security issues with sensitive data, shared IT resources and unknown thirdparty IT staff. Lack of ISV application support as each cloud architecture is different.

Cloud Computing Providers

5. Hot And Cold Aisle Containment Gaining Credence

Up to 40% of cooling in traditional hotailse/cold-aisle doesn't do any work. Air mixes over the tops of racks and around the rows.
Hot-aisle/cold-aisle containment uses a physical barrier to separate airflow through

makeshift design solutions, ducted plenum systems and other commercial offerings.

Benefits Of Containment
The separation of hot and cold air can provide much better uniformity of air temperature from the top to the bottom of the rack.
That uniformity of temperature enables data center pros to raise the set point temperature more safely. William Tschudi from LBNL said that, together with VFDs, containment can reduce fan energy use by 75%.

Hot Aisle/Cold Aisle Containment Problems

APC promotes hot-aisle containment, while Emerson Liebert's product line supports cold aisle. No standards at this time.
Hot aisle containment can pose a problem for staff that need to access the 110-degree hot aisle.

Fire suppression issues abound. Are you putting a sprinkler inside every containment unit? Are you using plastic sheeting that will melt and drop to the floor? Executives may not support that your data center looks like the back of a butcher shop.

Who Is Doing Containment?

Yahoo reduced data center cooling energy use 21%, reduced PUE ratio from 1.52 to 1.44, saving $563,000 annually in a 8,000 sq. ft. room within Yahoos 40,000 sq. ft. data center in Santa Clara, Calif. Advanced Data Centers is building a facility in Sacramento, Calif. The hot aisle will be contained by attaching a ducted plenum and chimney to exhaust the hot air outside, allowing ADC to pressurize the entire room with cool air.
Storage vendor NetApp has employed vinyl meat locker curtains to contain air in the hot aisles in its Silicon Valley data center. These curtains alone save NetApp 1 million kWh of energy per year.

6. Global Warming Policies Impacting The Data Center

Computers Run On Coal

Half of all the electricity generated in the U.S. comes from coal-burning power plants.
By reducing energy consumption, we lessen the demand to build more of these polluters. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that a 500-megawatt coal-burning power plant generates: 3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide, the primary cause of human-related global warming; 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain; and 500 tons of airborne particles, responsible for respiratory health problems.

Regulation On The Horizon?

There are massive efforts afoot in government agencies to start reporting carbon emissions and energy usage. That responsibility is going to be shifted to IT departments that maintain the data centers. We've attended the EPA forums, and it's not a question of if, but when, it is coming and what metrics will be required. It'd be far better for the people who run and operate data centers to come up with metrics that mean something. -Mike Manos, Microsoft

Climate Change Legislation Imminent

A carbon cap and trade scheme will drive energy costs up an estimated 20%. Data center operators already constricted by huge power bills are in for even more sticker shock at the meter in the future. The Warner-Lieberman Climate Security Act did not pass Senate committee, but both presidential candidates will make this a priority in the upcoming term.

7. IT Certifications Become Less Relevant

Has Certification Been A Factor In Your Hiring Or Promotions?

Yes-not hired 2% Yes-promoted 8% Yes-hired because of certification 12% Yes-not promoted 1%

No 77%

Has Certification Been A Factor In Bonus Or Raises?

90.00% 80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 9.94% 10.00% 0.00% No Yes-salary increase Yes-bonus and salary increase Yes-bonus Yes-no salary Yes-no salary Yes-no bonus increase or increase bonus 3.47% 2.37% 1.10% 0.95% 0.47% 81.70%

Certifications Not Worth Much

Regard for IT certifications has taken a nosedive -80% of respondents said IT certifications had no impact on their hiring, promotion or salary in the past year.
According to research from Foote Partners LLC, an IT job research firm, the pay for noncertified IT skills now averages more than pay for certified pros. IT has become less technical and has gotten closer to the customers and lines of business. Companies want more industry experience and understanding of the business process.

Exceptions To The Rule

VMware Certified professionals: Companies want employees with three to four years of virtualization experience. Marists CDCP certification is made up of six associate certifications. It takes two years to go through the coursework. Data center engineering in demand. From the NY Times: People with the skills to design, build and run a data center that does not endanger the power grid are suddenly in demand. Their status is growing, as are their salaries -- climbing more than 20% in the last two years into six figures for experienced engineers.

8. Virtualization Production Issues, Third-Party Tools At A Turning Point

According to a SearchDataCenter.com 2008 survey -61% of our readers use some form of virtualization and another 29% will deploy it this year. Only 10% of respondents had no plans for virtualization. But virtualization isn't without its difficulties. Asked which systems management tasks gave them trouble in VMware environments, respondents replied with a laundry list of complaints.

Customers are waiting to see third-party virtualization management tools mature before investing in them.

Top Virtualization Systems Management Challenges

Performance management, noted by 47% of respondents Capacity planning (45%) Backup and restore, change management, disaster recovery, troubleshooting and

migration were all listed as challenges by 20% to 30 % of respondents.

Which Third-Party VM Security Vendors Do You Use?

45.00% 40.00% 35.00% 30.00% 25.00% 20.00% 15.00% 10.00% 5.00% 0.00% 10.94% 8.85% 8.85% 2.60% 2.60% 2.60% 1.56% 26.56% 22.66% 16.93% 38.28%

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Which Third-Party Migration Tools Do You Use?

70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 13.51% 10.00% 0.00% None PlateSpin PowerConvert Vizioncore vRanger Pro Invirtus Enterprise VM Converter Leostream P>V direct Other 11.89% 6.49% 4.86% 4.86% 65.14%

In A VMware Environment, Which Systems Management Function Do You Find Most Challenging?
50.00% 45.00% 40.00% 35.00% 30.00% 25.00% 20.00% 15.00% 10.00% 5.00% 0.00% 29.49% 47.44% 45.38%

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What Is The Main Reason For Not Investing In Systems Management Software?
40.00% 35.00% 30.00% 25.00% 20.00% 15.00% 10.29% 10.00% 5.00% 0.00% No budget Have all we need No staff to implement Don't see the value in it Other 6.62% 23.90% 22.43% 36.76%

9. Server Trends For 2009

Nothing Too Shocking

HP is still the favorite x86 server vendor.
A good portion of data centers still favor rack servers over blades. The vast majority use Microsoft Windows as the primary operating system. Increase in large symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) servers, probably driven by the expanding use of virtualization.

Which Operating Systems Are You Using For Mission Critical Apps?
(Check All That Apply)
90.00% 80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00% Windows Server 2003 Red Hat Linux Solaris AIX HP-UX z/OS or other mainframe SUSE Linux Windows Server 2008 i OS (i5/OS) Ubuntu Linux
32.93% 32.19% 23.50% 21.41% 17.22% 79.94%

12.57%

11.98%

7.19%

3.74%

90.00% 80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00% 82.49%
Web servers

73.35%

Email

64.67%

Accounting

60.78%

Business intelligence/data warehouse

56.74%

Human resources

55.54%

Online transaction processing

47.31%

Citrix or other applicationprojection software Customer relationship management/Sales force automation

40.42%

38.47%

Enterprise resource planning

29.34%

E-commerce

Web Servers The Most Common App

27.10%

Supply chain/logistics

17.07%

Manufacturing

Performance Is Still The Most Important Factor For Purchasing Blade Servers
45.00% 40.00% 35.00% 30.00% 25.00% 20.00% 15.00% 10.00% 5.00% 0.00% Performance Purchase price Management features Power consumption Density Thermal load 18.77% 17.48% 11.83% 7.20% 3.08% 41.65%

Intel Continues To Dominate Processor Selection On x86 What Processor Will You Specify For Servers In 2008?
70.00% 62.69% 60.00% 50.00%

40.00% 30.00% 19.88% 20.00% 10.00% 15.29% 14.68% 13.76%

0.00% Intel x86/x64 Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) Don't know Don't specify specific processors Intel Itanium

10. Standardizing Data Center Energy Metrics

Energy Issues Increasingly Important How Important Is Energy Efficiency In Your Organization?

Not a priority 16% Very important 48%

Somewhat important 36%

36% Of Respondents Dont Know What Their Power Bill IsThis is dysfunctional!

Why Metrics Matter

Metrics like PUE will help data center managers make better decisions. You cant manage what you cant measure. This will give us empirical evidence on which energy efficient best practices are really working and allow users to determine ROI on projects.

PUE = Total facility power IT equipment power

Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency Or PUE

Power in to the data center (measured at the utility electric meter), divided by power out used to run the IT equipment for computing. The Uptime Institute: 85 corporate members (the largest financial data centers in the world) have an average PUE of 2.5. This means that for every 2.5 watts in at the utility meter, only one watt is delivered out to the IT load. Uptime estimates a best case scenario of 1.6 PUE for companies with the most efficient equipment and no over provisioning capacity.

Measuring PUE
Take a measurement at the facilitys utility meter. If your data center is in a mixed-use facility, measure only at the meter that powers your data center facility. If power to your data center is not on a separate utility meter, estimate the amount of power being consumed by the nondata center portion of the building and remove it from your calculation.
The next step is to measure the IT equipment load, which should be measured after power conversion, switching and conditioning is completed. According to the Green Grid, the most likely measurement point would be at the output of the computer room power distribution units (PDUs). This measurement should represent the total power delivered to the compute equipment racks in the data center.

Measuring PUE (Continued)

While PDU is an accurate measurement, experts say the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) output may be a better option. If you measure at the UPS output, theres only one place to measure. If you do it at the pure location, which is the PDU output, you would likely have to measure 600 to 700 locations to get the same information. One is more pure, but much more difficult. Whichever means users select, its important to measure the same way consistently.

Questions???
Matt Stansberry, Senior Site Editor
www.SearchDataCenter.com Mstansberry@techtarget.com